Google Algorithm Updates and Changes History

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Google changes it algorithm frequently and it is a very difficult task for marketers to know the Google’s pattern of algorithm roll out. Most of the updates released by Google throughout the year are minor updates which have lesser impact on search queries and affect lesser sites throughout the world. Google occasionally releases major algorithm updates which have a bigger impact on search queries causing rank decrease of many sites and even penalisation of some sites which go against Google policy.

It is surely a critical thing to know the pattern of Google’s algorithm updates and changes, but keeping the track of Google’s algorithm updates history can help you to get perspective on the rank fluctuations and organic website traffic, ultimately you can recheck your SEO strategies and improve search engine optimisation of your website.

To help you keep track of all minor and major algorithmic updates by Google, we had a deep research on this and documented the major and minor SEO updates and changes that was confirmed by Google. However, some for the changes were not confirmed by Google, but some webmasters noticed sudden drop in their website rankings and some experienced ranking fluctuations which made them sure there was some changes or updates done by Google behind the curtain.

Now, let’s go through all the major and minor Google algorithm updates.

2016 Google Updates

Google introduced a new algorithm “Possum” algorithm in 2016 to diversify the local results and reduce spam. Updates to mobile friendly and Penguin algorithms where also seen.

Major Updates

Penguin 4.0 Released (23rd September, 2016)

Google announced the release of Penguin 4.0 update on 23rd of September, 2016. The main objective of this algorithm was to reduce the spams in the search engine result. Websites that employed black hat SEO tricks such as keyword stuffing and linking schemes to rank their site in the SERP were found affected or penalised. People did see fluctuation in their rankings but in overall, nothing major effect were seen.

Penguin 4.0 had two major changes. The first change, it is now real time. So, the Penguin’s data is refreshed in real time which results in the quick visibility of the changes. The next change is Penguin is now more granular. Rather affecting the whole website, it devalues the spam adjusting ranking based on spam signals.

“Possum Algorithm Update” (1st September, 2016)

Google updated Possum algorithm with the objective to diversify the local results and prevent spam from ranking. This Possum algorithm was updated on 1st September of 2016. The algorithm used addresses and affiliation to filter out the duplicate local results. Possum algorithm update has given more priority to the physical location of the business. So, if a user is searching from a closer location from you then, the chances is more that your business get higher ranking.

Mobile Friendly Update (12th May, 2016)

Google rolled out the first mobile-friendly algorithm on 21st April, 2015 which was to boost the ranking of the sites with mobile friendly pages. After one year of the mobile update, Google rolled out another mobile friendly algorithm on 12th May, 2016 with the objective to increase the effect of the ranking signal to help the users find even more pages that are relevant and mobile-friendly. Those sites with mobile friendly design did not have any bad effect.

Unnamed Major Update (10th May, 2016)

Though Google did not confirm this unnamed major update which took on 10th May 2016, many of the MozCast and other Google Web weather trackers went through a 97 degree spike algorithm changes. From 6th May to 13th May, there was a continuous fluctuation in Google SERP.

AdWords Change Update (23rd February, 2016)

Google performed Adword change update on 23rs February, 2016. The update made a major change to Adwords by removing the ads of right-column entirely and adding 4 ads at the top blocks on many commercial searches. These paid search updates not only lead to zero sidebar in the SERP, but it also lead to increase in bottom of the SERP ads.

SERP Shake-Up (13th September, 2016)

High fluctuation in rankings, especially in local search was seen in between early to mid September. Webmasters were pretty sure there were substantial ranking shifts however, there were no confirmation from Google about the update.

2015 Google Updates

2015 was the year of mobile update, Google decided to give ranking boost to those sites which had mobile friendly web pages.

Major Updates

RankBrain Related Algorithm Update (26th October 2015)

Google announced the release of the RankBrain algorithm, which uses artificial intelligence to filter results. Webmasters viewed the unusually high increase in SERP fluctuations in Google desktop for a month. This algorithm helped Google to deliver more intelligent and precisely focused related search results.

Panda 4.2 (17th July, 2015)

The spammy links and sites with low quality which were penalised by Google Panda 4.1 in September, 2014 were refreshed by this update as Panda 4.2 was the first refresh after the update in 2014. The update took whole month to roll out and only 2-3% of queries were impacted by this Panda update.

The Core Quality Update — May 3, 2015

After spikes in Google desktop SERP fluctuation from April end to mid-May, Google confirmed Google core quality update on 13th May, 2015 which was called Google “Phantom 2” algorithm update. This update had a broad impact on “quality signals”.

Google Mobile-Friendly Update (22nd April, 2015)

On April 21st, 2015 Google pre-announced the Google Mobilegeddon Mobile Update to change the mobile results ranking. This update gave a boost to mobile friendly pages in Google’s mobile search results and the sites without mobile friendly design were given less priority. However, the impact of this update was much smaller than expected.

HTTPS Update (17th December, 2015)

Google announced HTTPS update on 17th December, 2015 in order to decrease the risk for users to browse a website over an insecure connection. After this update, HTTPS sites were give more priority and Google started giving ranking boost to those HTTPS URLs in search results.

Hacked Sites Update (5th October, 2015)

In order to improve the quality of search, Google updated hacked sites algorithm which removed all the hacked sites from the search results. 5 % of the queries were expected to be affected by this algorithmic change depending on the language.

Google Snack Pack Update (August, 2015)

Google rolled out an important update in august of 2015. The update gave new design to local by removing the normal 7 packs map that shows up in the local business search results and replaced it by 3 packs map.

Unnamed Update (4th February, 2015)

Although Google didn’t give any confirmation about the update, webmasters tracked fluctuation in Google SERPs. However, Google confirmed that the sudden movement in ranking was not related to Google Penguin or Google Panda.

2014 Google Updates

2014 was the year of the famous Google Panda Algorithm Update which hammered a lot of website rankings. Google also refreshed Pigeon and Penguin Updates. This year, Google made a big decision by removing the Google Authorship functionality.

Major Updates

Google Pigeon Expanded (22nd December, 2014)

Google expanded the Google Pigeon Algoithm update that rolled out on 24th July, 2014. Though the update was confirmed on 22nd December, but, it was rolled out as early as 19th in UK, Canada and Australia. This update brought significant volatility in Maps results in UK, Australia and Canada.

Penguin 3.0 Update (18th October, 2014)

Google released its sixth Penguin refresh update on 18th October, 2014. This update was smaller than expected as it only affected 1 % of US English queries whereas the original Penguin update affected >3% of the queries. Recoveries of sites penalised by previous Penguin updated were reported.

Panda 4.1 (#27) (23rd September, 2014)

Google started a slow roll out of an improved Panda algorithm in early 20th of September. Few signals that helped Panda identify the low quality content more precisely were discovered in this update. This global roll-out affected 3-5% of the queries.

HTTPS/SSL Update (6th August, 2014)

Google announced that the sites with secure connections will be given higher priority with slight boost in the ranking from 6th August, 2014. Google carried out months of speculations before rolling out this update.

Google rolled out this local algorithm update with an aim to provide more useful, relevant and accurate local search results. This algorithm update had an impact on local search results rankings with an increase and decrease in website referrals, leads and businesses of some sites.

Panda 4.0 Update (#26) (20th May, 2014)

Panda 4.0 update rolled out with lots of chatter in SEO and webmaster forums causing sharp fluctuations in search result rankings. This major update included both algorithm update and a data refresh update affecting about 7.5% of English language queries.

Page Layout Algorithm Update (#3) (6th February, 2014)

Google updated its Page Layout Algorithm, which is also known as “Top Heavy 3 Update” in the beginning of February month. This algorithm update targeted sites with too many ads above the fold in order to make search experience more efficient and quick.

Penguin 3.0 Extended (11th December, 2014)

Google spokesperson reported that the Penguin update is still rolling out and there won’t be a particularly distinct end point to the activity as Penguin is shifting to more continuous updates on 11th Decembver, 2014. It confirmed to continuously optimise the algorithm with lots of minor updates.

Pirate Update #2 (21st October, 2014)

A major drop in rankings of sites with pirated content or those sites which violated copyright laws were spotted. However, this update did not have much effect on sites as it specifically targeted those sites which received DMCA takedown requests.

Private Blog Networks De-Indexed (18th September, 2014)

Photos Removed from Authorship (28th June, 2014)

To create a better mobile experience and a more consistent design across devices, John Mueller announced they were dropping all the authorship photos from SERPs on 28th June, 2015. Well, it took 3 days to complete the drop.

2013 Google Updates

2013 was the year of new algorithm development and updates. Google developed and rolled out new algorithms such as “Hummingbird”, “Payday” and “Down Crowding” whose main focus were on semantic search and spammy queries.

Major Updates

Google Authorship Update (19th December, 2013)

As promised by Matt Cutts in his keynote speech at Pubcon Las Vegas in October, there was the removal of authorship mark-up from the search results. Over a period of month, 15% of authorship drop-off was noticed which was the reason for the quality to go up.

Hummingbird Update (20th August, 2013)

Google developed and rolled out a new search algorithm, called “Hummingbird” around 21st of August whose main focus was on semantic search. This algorithm was developed especially to provide more personalised results although there was no report of penalties like that of Panda and Penguin.

Panda Recovery Update (18th July, 2013)

This soft Panda update rolled out over 10 day period and was more finely targeted. This update was different than other Panda updates as many webmasters who were struck by Panda update were found claiming recovery.

Multi Week Algorithm Update (28th June, 2013)

A massive signs of ranking volatility was seen which peaked up on 27th of June according to data by MozCast. However, the pattern of this multi week algorithm was unclear and it did not reveal any general insights too.

Payday Loan Update (11th June 2013)

An update was made on 11th of June, 2013 to target “spammy queries” such as payday loan, pornographic and other spammed queries. This global update had roughly 0.3% impact of the US queries whereas it went higher than 4% for Turkish queries where web spam is typically higher.

Down Crowding Update (21st May, 2013)

In earlier days, there were problems such as one domain taking too many spots on the page. So, to solve this issue Google released down crowding update. The main goal of this update was to maintain a balance between providing diverse results and at the same time return the most authoritative search results for the query.

Phantom Update (9th May, 2013)

There was a huge uptick in chatter around major ranking and search result fluctuation in the period around 9th May. Although, it was confirmed that the update was “Phantom Update” but, the exact nature of the update was unknown.

Unnamed Update (14th November, 2013)

A large spike in chatter in the online discussion forums and social Medias were seen with the unusual activity tracked by lots of SERP tracking tools. However, there was no confirmation of this update by Google.

In-depth Article Update (6th August, 2013)

Google introduced new search results to help those users who are searching for in-depth articles. In-depth articles are like news results or local packs which are rich search elements and sits in the left-hand column.

No Name Update (26th July 2013)

Panda Update 25 (14th March, 2013)

Panda Update 25 was the last manual push of Google’s Panda update as Matt Cutts pre-announced a Panda update at SMX West and told this update would be the last update before they integrate Panda into the core algorithm.

June/July 86 Google Updates (10th August, 2012)

Google released an official blog post on “June/July High Quality Highlights” which included 86 changes. Some of the changes included resource caching for mobile, images universal rankings, freshness and many more.

DMCA/Pirate Penalty Update (10th August, 2012)

Google rolled out “DMCA”, also known as “Pirate Penalty” update which will start penalising the sites with number of copyright removal notices. The main aim of this update was to help users find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily.

Link Warnings Update (19th July, 2012)

Google sent a number of unnatural link warnings to webmasters in March/April saying they should act on it. But, on 20th June of 2012, Google had another announcement telling publishers to ignore the previous unnatural link warnings.

May 39 Google Updates (7th June, 2012)

Google posted a blog highlighting 39 changes they made in the month of May. It included changes like unified soccer feature, improvements to NBA search feature, improvements to news rankings, inorganic backlinks signals application and many more.

March 50-Pack Update (3rd April, 2012)

Another batch of updates which includes Panda 3.4, improvements to handling of symbols for indexing, better scoring, site links data refresh, UI refresh, improvements to results for navigational queries, high quality sites algorithm data update, better local results and so on.

February 40-Pack Update (27th February, 2012)

Google published a second set of search quality highlights on their Inside Search blog with 40 new updates which offered more coverage for related searches, less duplication, more locally relevant predictions, and refreshed per-URL country information and so on.

Venice (27th February, 2012)

Google’s Venice update localised organic results on broad search queries. After this update, when a searcher typed in queries without any geo-modifier, local sites started showing up. This was surely great news for local SEOs and usability.

Page layout Update (19th January, 2012)

Page layout update also known has “Top Heavy #1 Update” penalised the sites with too much of ad-space above the “fold”. This update was made with an effort to help searchers find more high-quality websites in the search results.

Search + Your World Update (10th January, 2012)

Google introduced new “Search Plus Your World” feature, which turned Google+ into an essential social network for any search marketer by providing personal results, profiles in search and people and pages.

Search Quality Video (12th March 2012)

Google published a video into a search quality meeting for those interested in the algorithm. The video included a context about the Google’s process and their priorities. However, this was not an algorithm change.

Panda 3.2 (#10) Update (18th January 2012)

2011 Google Updates

A number of 10 pack updates were rolled out in 2011. The algorithm updates of 2011 had an impact of 1% to 40% of search queries.

Major Updates

December 10-Pack (1st December 2011)

Google rolled out a second round up of 10 updates including related query results refinements, more comprehensive indexing, parked domain, auto complete predictions, original content, and fresher and more complete blog search results and so on.

10-Pack of Updates (14th November, 2011)

Google announced 10 smaller changes that they made which included cross-language information retrieval, snippets with more page content and less header/menu content, fresh search results, rich snippets and so on.

Pagination Elements (15th September 2011)

Google introduced the rel =“ next” and rel=”prev” link attributes to indicate the relationship between the component URLs in a paginated series. This update was a great help to the crawl and duplication problems created by pagination.

Panda 2.4 (#6) (12th August 2011)

Google rolled out Panda 2.4 internationally to most languages except for Chinese, Japanese and Korean. The main focus of this update was to return high-quality sites to users. This change in algorithm impacted 6-9% of search queries for most languages.

Google+ (28th June, 2011)

Google launched Google+, a serious competitor to Facebook after a number of social media failures on 28th June, 2011. It was an attempt to make Google better by including user, user’s relationship and their interests.

Schema.org (2nd June. 2011)

Google, Bing and Yahoo united together to make search listings even richer through the structures data, Schema. With the sole use of Meta data, these three search engines enhanced the search results display.

Panda 3.1 (#9) (18th November 2011)

Panda “Flux” (#8) (5th October 2011)

Matt Cutts confirmed Panda “Flux” Update which had an impact of 2% of total search queries. Though Google confirmed this “Flux” update, but, they didn’t provide any detail information about this update.

Panda 2.3 (#5) (23rd July 2011)

It was another small update to Google Panda filter which incorporated some new signals that helped to differentiate between the higher and lower quality sites. After this minor update, many sites ranked higher.

Panda 2.1 (#3) (9th May 2011)

2010 Google Updates

Google rolled out four major updates along with some minor updates in 2010. The major updates were Google Instant, Caffeine, Mayday and Google places.

Major Updates

Google Instant (8th September 2010)

Google Instant was an expansion to Google Suggest, which helped people get results as they type their queries. This search before type update came with features such as dynamic results, ability to predict and scroll to search.

Caffeine Update (8th June, 2010)

Google rolled out a new web indexing system named “Caffeine” which provided 50% fresher results for web searches than the old index system. It created the largest collection of web content that Google has ever offered. Now, finding links to relevant content be it a news story or a forum post, much easier and sooner.

Google Places (20th April 2010)

Google turned Local Business Center to Google Places with this update. Along with this change, Google added few features like services areas, business photo shoots, customised QR code, favourite places and a simple new way to advertise.

Google Caffeine (10th August 2009)

Caffeine was Google’s huge infrastructure change, a next-generation architecture for Google’s web search. This change was intended to push the envelope on size, speed indexing, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions.

Vince Update (20th February, 2009)

Google released a major update on 20th February, 2009 which brought a significant change in how Google returned results for a certain set of keywords. Many webmasters believed the focus of this major update on trust, authority and reputation was all to support big brands.

Dewey Update (2nd April, 2008)

There was a huge discussion among the SEO communities regarding the big changes in the Google search results, but the specifics were unclear. However, Google confirmed this was all because of “Dewey Update”, it had been a while since Google named a update. This was also the first major update widely noticed by webmasters in a while.

2007 Google Updates

Major Updates

Universal Search (16th May, 2007)

This was not an algorithmic update by Google, rather integration to traditional search results. With universal search update, Google launched the new architecture by breaking down the traditionally separated various search properties and integrated the vast amounts of information from images, maps, books, videos and news.

Buffy Update (17th June 2007)

Though it was not clear what happened with this update, Matt Cutts explained that this update was simply a collection of smaller changes. The name “Buffy” was given to this update in honour of Vanessa Fox who was leaving Google.

2006 Google Updates

There were no algorithm updates in this year. Though there was quite a fuss in SEO community, Google didn’t confirm any updates or refresh.

Major Updates

Big Daddy Update (1st November 2005)

“Big Daddy Update” was technically intended to update infrastructure. This update changed the way Google handled URL canonicalization, redirects and other many technical issues. This update was announced on 1st of November, but it rolled out for few months, wrapping up in the beginning week of March month.

Google Local and Maps Merge (6th October 2005)

Google made it easier for searchers by merging Google local and maps together. Searchers were able to find both local search and mapping information together on the same search results page by just using Google Maps.

Google Sitemaps (2nd June, 2005)

A new program was introduced by Google, “Google Sitemaps” which allowed webmasters and site owners to create an XML files containing all their URLs that they want Google to crawl and add them in web index. However, this update was proved to be useful which gave a good influence to SEO.

Nofollow Update (18th January 2005)

Google added a small yet very important feature “the Nofollow Attribute” which worked against the comment spam. The “Nofollow Update” was not a traditional algorithm change but had a significant impact since it combated spam and controlled outbound link quality.

Personalised Search (28th June 2005)

With the release of personalised search, users were able to use search history that they’ve been building to get the better search results. Google was able to make the results more personal and more accurate with this update.

Allegra Update (2nd February 2005)

On 2nd February of 2005, many webmasters went through ranking changes. But, the exact specifics of this update were unclear. Some of the people thought this update affected the “Sandbox” whereas the rest thought the LSI has been changed.

2004 Google Updates

Two popular algorithm updates “Brandy” and “Austin” were rolled out in the year 2004 which focused in LSI, link neighbourhood and so on.

Brandy Update (17th February 2004)

Lots of changes were encountered because of the “Brandy Update” released by Google. The changes seen were massive index expansion, Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI), the concept of link neighbourhood and increased attention to anchor text relevance.

Austin Update (23rd January 2004)

Google came up with another update “Austin Update” to fill the hole or missing point left by “Florida Update” released on 16th November of 2003. Google was found continuing the crackdown on tricky on-page tricks; Google included invisible text and Meta-tag stuffing.

2003 Google Updates

2003 was the year of only major updates.

Major Updates

Florida Update (16th November 2003)

Florida is probably the larger and aggressive updates which completely shake out SEO world. During this update, many sites that applied low-value SEO tactics like keyword stuffing and so on lost their site ranking. This update made many business owners unhappy.

Fritz Update (1st July 2003)

Google’s Fritz update ended the monthly “Google Dance”, where the index was updated every month. Instead, they came with more accurate information by the indexing every day. This every day small changes were referred as “ever flux”.

Esmerelda Update (15th June 2003)

Esmerelda update had some huge structure changes regarding Google update. This update was probably the last regular update of Google.

Dominic Update (14th May 2003)

Though the exact nature of this update was not cleared, many sites experienced bounces. Google bots were found crawling through the web and bouncing the sites right and left. This update also changed the way Google counted and reported back links.

Cassandre Update (12th April 2003)

Cassandre was yet another major update released by Google which mainly focused on basic link issues. Other main focuses of this update were massive linking from co-domains, hidden text and hidden links. Google has allowed banned sites to submit a reconsideration request in this update. This happened for the first time.

Boston Update (7th March 2003)

Google released its first named update in March month of 2003. This was the first named major update. This update had a great impact on SERPs as with this update Google improved their algorithm further.

Minor Updates

Supplemental Index (September 2003)

After Google released Fritz update, it released another update to index more documents, which would help them to do so without having to hurt the performance.

Google released its first documented update in September month of 2002. All the SEO arguments and Google dance started from this update. This is the first major update performed by Google since its establishment.

1998

Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin on September 4, 1998. Though the domain google.com was already registered on 15th September 1997, only after a year they filed for Incorporation on September 4 of 1998. Since then the journey of Google officially began.

Did we miss any updates in our blog post? Have you experienced Google penalty before? If yes, how did you recover your site from it? Please share with us in the comment box below.